Leszek Kolakowski: the Work in the Shadow

Leszek Kolakowski's 'Swiadomosc religijna i wiez koscielna' (Religious Consciousness and the Church Bond) is a book that appeared in a certain constellation, and it is a guiding star of this constellation. The work was published in February 1965. Beside it, such fundamental works appear as Andrzej Walicki's 'The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia' (printed in August 1964), Bronislaw Baczko's 'Rousseau, samotnosc i wspólnota' (Rousseau, Solitude and Community), printed in October 1964 and Jerzy Szacki's 'Kontrrewolucyjne paradoksy' (Counter-revolutionary Paradoxes), printed in September 1965. At first, the issues raised in Kołakowski's book were not in the focus of attention of young philosophers - students, postgraduate students and listeners that were creating 'the Warsaw school of history of ideas'. With time, it was Kolakowski's work, 'work in the shadow', as the author of the paper - and witness of its original reception - calls it, that contributed a lot to arousing interest with these and similar issues, and then - to a conscious research that stemmed from a shared problem horizon, which led to continuations, verifications and criticisms of cognitive positions.